Upcoming social enterprise events: September/October 2006

Posted on September 8, 2006 by sse

As the world of social enterprise and entrepreneurship grows and grows, I am beginning to think it is possible to go to a related event or conference on every single day of the year….that’s not a gauntlet being thrown down by the way. It does showcase the need to choose wisely and appropriately, and make the most of the events you choose to attend though. Here’s some of what’s upcoming in the UK this autumn:

– 14th September: Social Enterprise Sports Conference, at the Walker Stadium, Leicester; featuring Richard Caborn and a demonstration of BMX and skateboarding….see SEEM’s website for more, or call 0115 845 6434

– 17th-19th September: Enterprising Communities 2006, in Birmingham, which is the DTA’s annual conference; features Ruth Kelly and Ed Miliband, + practitioners, coach trips, multimedia visits, expert surgeries and hot topic debates…..see DTA’s website for more information…or call 01633 411 732

– 25th September: Reaching Your Market, a Social Enterprise London conference on marketing for non-profit organisations; includes "Diverse and high calibre speakers with expertise in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors; discussions and debate about how and when to market your social aim as a USP; networking time with fellow social enterprise professionals"; see SEL’s website or call 020 7022 1920

– 2nd October: Match Winners, a conference at Canary Wharf on commercial partnerships that are "making money…and making a difference"; follows on from the CAN report of the same name last autumn, and features Fifteen, Green-Works, Barclays, Ed Miliband, ACEVO, CAN and SEC etc……; see here for more details

– 19th October: FOOTSEY 100 at York Racecourse, "the largest and most successful social economy trade fair in the UK"; features workshops/sessions on housing associations, procurement, a Dragon’s Den, legal structures and more; see FOOTSEY 100, or call

– 20th October: Social Enterprise and Community Regeneration, one-day conference at Brunel University, providing "a forum for addressing and debating the role of social enterprise as a means for community regeneration"; see Brunel’s website for more info

That about covers it for now, though there are some interesting regional events going on (see SESC, for example, in Yorkshire). If I was choosing? Probably FOOTSEY, DTA and MatchWinners, in that order, but, as they used to say on Blind Date, the choice is yours….oh, and don’t forget Enterprise Week (and Social Enterprise Day on the Thursday) follow hot on the heels in November….

Minipreneurs and trendwatching

Posted on September 4, 2006 by sse

doudoune pas cher, and its offshoot, Springwise, have long been worth a look now and again, if only to convince yourself that your finger is on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Or something.

The latest thing I spotted was Minipreneurs, which is kind of a mix of web 2.0, pro-ams and, well, grassroots entrepreneurs. Or as trendwatching puts it:

“We have dubbed this trend ‘MINIPRENEURS’:
a vast army of consumers turning entrepreneurs; including small and
micro businesses, freelancers, side-businesses, weekend entrepreneurs,
web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses,
seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mompreneurs, pro-ams, solopreneurs, eBay
traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on.”

Over on the less webby, more social side of things, Robert Katz took up the theme (meme?) on Worldchanging and pointed out that “consumers turning entrepreneurs” is all the more powerful when ‘consumers’ is widened to ‘users’, meaning social entrepreneurs changing things with new models and ways of doing things emerging from the grassroots:

“First of all, minipreneurs aren’t new, so all the talk does feel a bit hyped-up. Microfinancerelojes falsos
organizations have been funding small-scale business ideas for 30-plus
years, and it’s generally acknowledged that entrepreneurs can be a
pretty good investment. They deliver development outcomes, too, by
providing lower-cost goods and services while building local human and
social capital. What are new are the tools and strategies available to
help businesses get started and continue growing – and that’s where the
real potential lies.”

Katz is very good on the need for a combination of flexible business models and methodologies with passionate, driven, engaged entrepreneurs. Whilst his focus, and his case studies, are centred in “low-income” countries, the same is no less true for poorer areas in the UK, US, Europe et al.

[Also of interest on WorldChanging is Jon Lebowsky on Nonprofit 2.0 and the Long Tail; Social Entrepreneurship 2.0 to follow ;0)]

The Purpose Prize and silver social entrepreneurs

Posted on August 31, 2006 by sse

Had you ever heard of the Purpose Prize? No, me neither. What a great name, btw. It is a prize for "Americans leading with experience", or, more prosaically:

The Purpose Prize awards $100,000 to each of five people over
60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges. It’s for those with
the passion and experience to discover new opportunities, create new
programs, and make lasting change.

Which basically means they give £50k to five social entrepreneurs over 60. Check out the finalists here, or read a piece in the Wall Street Journal, which covers the prize and features four of the finalists. Inspiring people, inspiring change, as the SSE strapline would say.

What is interesting for me is that when politicians and our sector fellows talk about "encouraging new entrants" to social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, they talk (for 99% of the time) about young people, entrepreneurship in schools, marginalised groups and so on….so rarely have I ever heard anyone raise the issue of the ever-growing, talented, skilled and passionate older population who are entering retirement not to relax but often with a renewed sense of purpose. As the article in WSJ puts it:

"The prize highlights the emergence of innovative altruism among
older Americans. In a survey of 1,000 people age 50 to 70 that Civic Ventures
commissioned last year, nearly three in five of those in their 50s said they
wanted to use the next stage of their lives to improve the quality of life in
their communities."

Is the UK any different? No. SSE has several Fellows over 50 who’ve completed its programmes, and it is a trend I envision increasing. I look forward to the first Purpose Prize UK….

[info via Vancouver Social Enterprise Forum and the Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship ]

Entrepreneurship education

Posted on August 18, 2006 by sse

At SSE we like to tackle the big questions in life: If a tree falls in a wood and no-one’s there, does it make a sound? What is the meaning of life? Where is Timbuktu? And, of course, are entrepreneurs born not made?

A similar poser is "Can entrepreneurship be taught?", to which one might add, "or can it be learned?" There’s no easy answers here, but SSE certainly recruits on the basis of character traits and life experience, rather than paper qualifications. What might be a more interesting version is "Can entrepreneurship be learned in an educational institution?" This is particularly relevant because a lot of the skills that employers are looking for are possessed by entrepreneurs: innovation, flexibility, cross-cutting skills, adaptability, self-reliance and so forth. As a result, there is a lot of interest in teaching entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship, in schools.

The most famous and long-lasting of these has been Young Enterprise, which encourages students at school to set up actual business/enterprises in a learning-by-doing kind of way, primarily outside of the normal school day. The Young Foundation are looking at something more radical still, in the form of Studio Schools; as they put it:

"The idea of a studio school hangs on the central feature of a series of
operating businesses run by the students themselves. As small schools
closely linked to particular industries, participant numbers would be
capped at 300 per school and the staff would comprise a mix of teachers
and non-teachers with business expertise."

Which reminds me of an even more radical US experiment that I read about, under which the whole school had its own money, courts and taxation. Now that is learning by doing….

Other initiatives with a particularly social entrepreneurial leaning have been put in place by Changemakers and Cantilever (offshoot of CAN), though they battle the limits of the curriculum. If entrepreneurship inevitably contains risk and failure, can it happen in the classroom?

Or, as this article suggests, do most entrepreneurs simply get on with it from a young age, be it via the paper round, selling to school friends, or, in some unusual cases, running a lemonade stand that gives money to charity…..youngest social entrepreneur of the week award….

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